Last year, we posted a piece that advised students on things they could do to demonstrate their continued interest in a top-tier college that had offered them waitlist status instead of admission. However, the actions that we recommended would place additional demands on a student’s time during the busiest part of their admissions campaign, and the impact produced would be marginal. So the question arises… is being waitlisted worth your effort, even in the case of your dream school?

The best way to handicap your odds of ultimate acceptance from a waitlist is to review the history of that school regarding waitlisted applicants. Schools usually follow a steady pattern year after year, although flip-flops occasionally occur when an admissions office has erred significantly in the forecast of its yield rate (the percentage of admitted students who will accept the offer and matriculate in the fall). However, since students can’t predict the pending yield status of a school while they’re waitlisted, history is the only guide.

The graphic below is an overview of the odds of being admitted from a waitlist:

This sample of waitlist statistics from 160 private and public institutions yielded the following key metrics, which are not particularly encouraging:

On average, 17% of students accepting a place on a waitlist were admitted.

58% of schools admitted 10% or less of students on their waitlist last year.

41% of the schools admitted 5% or less from their waitlist.

12% of schools did not admit any students from their waitlist.

Let’s review a few Ivy League and other top-tier institution’s waitlist programs to see how waitlisted students have fared lately. Stanford, the most selective university in the U.S., admitted only seven from its waitlist in 2014 and none from a list of 927 in 2015. No waitlisted students were admitted at Bryn Mawr, Dickinson, Lehigh, and Tulane colleges. They had little success at Carnegie Mellon (four) and Duke (nine).

The University of Michigan’s waitlist invitations grew extraordinarily high last year because its application volume had recently spiked. Surging volume increased uncertainty and the University’s yield rate was expected to fluctuate. About 4,500 students accepted spots on Michigan’s waitlist — the equivalent of 75% of the school’s freshman class size. However, their forecasted yield rate proved fairly accurate and they admitted only 2% of the students on their waitlist.

Harvard uses waitlists but reveals nothing about them. Yale disclosed that it invited 1,324 applicants to its list in 2014, about the same size as its entering class, but declined to reveal how many were admitted.

Case Western Reserve University assesses admissions at higher-ranked private schools such as Northwestern, Chicago, Carnegie Mellon, and Emory. Those schools have, in the past, drawn admitted students away from Case Western. To ensure that the University achieves its freshman class goal of 1,250 students, Case Western keeps a large waitlist and uses it aggressively. The school invited more than 9,000 applicants to its wait list in 2015 and 5,119 of them accepted. The University offered admission to 518 of those students. Not all accepted, but the school met its enrollment goal through its waitlist management process.

The Table below shows the waitlist results for selected institutions, including many of the most selective colleges and universities in the U.S., for the 2015-2016 admissions year. Some top-tier schools are missing because they either don’t maintain a waitlist or they don’t report results. Some institutions report some results but not others, as indicated by “n/a”.Bottom of Form

Table: Waitlist Results for Selected Institutions for 2015-2106

Institution

Waitlist Offers

Waitlist Size

Waitlist Admits

Class Size

Amherst

1,398

643

33

477

Barnard

1,195

130

6

635

Bates

1,535

671

11

517

Brandeis

1,553

595

25

802

Brown

n/a

n/a

192

1,615

Bryn Mawr

872

427

0

385

Bucknell

2,427

922

59

938

Caltech

n/a

n/a

n/a

241

Carleton

1,350

442

16

491

Carnegie Mellon

5,526

2,835

4

1,575

Case Western Reserve

9,446

5,119

518

1,259

Centre

183

42

19

379

Claremont McKenna

919

453

75

343

Colgate

1,896

913

49

773

College of the Holy Cross

1,307

494

8

738

Colorado College

1,119

232

24

583

Connecticut College

1,306

637

61

482

Cornell University

3,583

2,231

81

3,180

Dartmouth

1,852

963

129

1,116

Dickinson

848

261

0

731

Duke

n/a

n/a

9

1,745

Emory

3,809

1,910

45

1,357

Furman

208

51

14

672

George Washington

3,827

1,354

62

2,589

Georgia Tech

3,397

2,031

38

3,089

Gettysburg

768

n/a

n/a

699

Grinnell

1,224

474

18

442

Hamilton

958

365

47

473

Harvey Mudd

534

354

11

214

Haverford

883

354

12

346

Johns Hopkins

2,752

1,747

187

1,299

Kenyon

2,876

998

17

492

Lafayette

1,532

428

3

672

Lehigh

4,232

1,847

0

1,261

Macalester

350

177

0

583

Middlebury

1,304

530

33

589

Mount Holyoke

785

459

7

532

Northwestern

2,614

1,452

43

2,018

Oberlin

1,126

459

86

778

Occidental

705

359

26

517

Ohio State

1,556

304

304

7,023

Penn State

1,473

1,473

1,445

7,626

Pitzer

1,021

895

23

267

Pomona

842

492

38

400

Princeton

1,206

857

39

1,319

Purdue

1,728

1,713

643

6,812

Rensselaer Polytechnic

4,087

2,203

57

1,379

Rhodes

1,290

277

45

562

Rice

2,237

1,659

127

969

Sewanee

1,039

202

21

469

Skidmore

1,742

378

13

686

Smith

773

398

132

609

St. Olaf

729

150

113

763

Stanford

1,256

927

0

1,720

Tulane

3,413

921

0

1,719

Union

1,167

626

64

568

Univ. of Cal. at Berkeley

3,760

2,445

1,340

5,550

Univ. of California at Davis

9,033

2,733

2,030

5,369

Univ. of California at Irvine

7,361

4,035

131

5,756

Univ. of Cal. at Santa Barbara

5,006

2,910

278

4,459

University of Maryland

500

500

0

3,937

Univ. of Mass. at Amherst

5,450

1,278

26

4,661

University of Miami

5,563

1,295

73

2,080

University of Michigan

14,960

4,512

90

6,071

Univ. of North Carolina

3,144

1,513

78

4,076

Univ. of Pennsylvania

2,474

1,438

90

2,435

University of Richmond

4,070

1,547

151

807

University of Texas

1,634

1,168

362

7,743

University of Virginia

4,547

2,081

402

3,685

Vanderbilt University

n/a

n/a

188

1,607

Washington and Lee

1,983

764

193

454

Wellesley

1,404

843

30

595

Wesleyan

1,877

884

12

787

Whitman

872

370

67

364

William & Mary

3,552

1,676

187

1,518

Williams

1,603

573

53

551

Worcester Polytechnic

2,472

1,373

41

1,093

Yale

1,324

n/a

n/a

n/a

Source: The Washington Post – Responses to Common Data Set questionnaire by admissions officials

The best thing to do if you’re offered waitlist status by your first choice school is to obtain the advice of your IvySelect college admissions consultant. Together, we will consider acceptance offers that you may have received from the other 12 or 13 schools to which you have applied. Since we’ve already determined that you’d be happy at any one of the schools that you applied to, you may be advised to send a deposit to the most appealing of them by May 1st and to plan on attending that school in the fall. Then, if you’re admitted to your dream school from its waitlist, we can consider your options again at that point. Using this approach, you’ll cover all bases and have no regrets come fall.

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